Posts Tagged: Harper Lee

Is it because rather than keeping us almost entirely out of the empty room, as Lee did, Ocean chose to let us in through hints and ephemera? And more broadly, what are we owed by an artist whom we profess to love?

The publication of Go Set a Watchman may have cast Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird in a new light, but the high school classic and its author will forever occupy an essential spot in the American literary canon. Michiko Kakutani remembers Lee’s work for the Times:

In an announcement that is equal parts completely expected and narrow-eyes-tilted-head inducing, Aaron Sorkin will adapt Harper Lee’s beloved classic To Kill a Mockingbird for the stage, to be directed by Barlett Sher. Hopefully without Sorkinisms.

For the New York Times, Alexandra Alter explores how Truman Capote and Harper Lee’s childhood friendship influenced their work, and wonders if the famous duo’s careers would have developed differently if their relationship wasn’t “strained by bitterness and rivalry.”

After all of the hype and controversy surrounding Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, some readers found themselves a little bit disappointed when they read the actual book. One book store in Michigan has started offering refunds for regretful readers.

We’ll never know how Harper Lee’s editor, Therese von Hohoff Torrey, would have felt about the publication of Go Set A Watchman, because she died in 1974. But probably, she wouldn’t be excited about it:

As Ms. Hohoff saw it, the manuscript was by no means fit for publication.

According to a recent account by Harper Lee’s lawyer, the famed author wrote a third manuscript that may be a “parent novel” that “bridges” To Kill A Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman together. The manuscript was discovered in Lee’s safe-deposit box, and is currently being examined by experts.

In 1978, while writing Gregory Peck’s biography, Michael Freedman had the privilege of talking on the phone with Harper Lee, resulting in possibly the only interview the author ever gave. Now, he writes about their conversation over at the Guardian:

At the Guardian, author M.O. Walsh tries to account for the global popularity of southern gothic literature. While he attributes much of southern gothic literature’s success to a tradition of oral storytelling, he also suggests that it is the southern novelist’s ability to treat the “grotesque” with empathy that helps to create memorable characters:

Show me a southern gothic novel written by someone who’s not from the south and the odds are that I’ll show you a bad novel.

The mysterious buzz surrounding the upcoming release of Harper Lee’s second novel, Go Set a Watchman, has had readers and journalists speculating about the elderly author’s mental capabilities in a manner often invasive and disrespectful. Lee answered a particularly nosy inquiry with a curt “go away,” concisely expressing how the rest of us have felt about journalists all along.

Since the announcement of Harper Lee’s forthcoming novel Go Set a Watchman, residents of Lee’s hometown, Monroeville, Alabama, along with the general public, have questioned whether or not publishers are taking advantage of the eighty-eight year old author. Recently, however, Lee’s lawyer Tonja Carter insists that the author is “lucid.”

[Lee] is a very strong, independent, and wise woman who should be enjoying the discovery of her long lost novel,” Carter said.

Here’s an author who has staunchly refused interviews and publicity since 1960, who hasn’t breathed a word about her interest in publishing another book to either family or friends, but who is suddenly fine with releasing her decades-old Mockingbird prequel, despite the fact that it doesn’t sound like anyone at her publisher has actually been in touch with her about it?

Harper Lee is set to publish a sequel to her Pulitzer-winning To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee’s only novel has sold more than 30 million copies and earns almost $4 million a year. Lee’s poor health, combined with more than five decades of literary silence, leads Modern Notion to question the motivation to suddenly publish a followup:

Some fans are confused about the timing of the book and wonder whether Lee was pressured into the decision.

Last Monday, Harper Lee brought an end to what CNN has called “a glaring holdout in the digital library of literary masterpieces,” and the news has social media buzzing with fans chomping at the bit. Lee has finally agreed to release an electronic copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.

The museum, “built around a refurbished version of the courtroom” from To Kill A Mockingbird, already got rid of gift-shop items like “Calpurnia’s Cookbook,” but retains other “unlicensed Mockingbird-related merchandise, ranging from T-shirts to tote bags to packages of ‘Mockingbird Lemonade Mix.'”

The whole story highlights a queasy give-and-take between crass commercialization, tradition, and a much-needed source of jobs and revenue in a small town.

One customer review of "The Catcher in the Rye" warns readers that it will make you “want to kill yourself." Another calls Holden Caulfield a “whiney, immature, angst ridden teenager who need[s] a smack in the head.” ...more

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